Unfinished Sermon Bits

Brothers and sisters, before we go on, it is important to understand something…

I am not suggesting that we do not live this life as best we can. We have to do all the things God puts on our way while we inhabit this earth.

And something else, our partaking in the future Paul refers to is in itself by no means the sole purpose of our Christian living.

We do not live good, clean lives so that one day we may go to heaven and share in the joys of heaven, as if “heaven” that care free place, is the goal. No! The goal is to be with God, to glorify God, to be all that we were originally made to be and, in the fullness of time, to become all that we were meant to be again.

The Kingdom of heaven, and our sharing in it, is about the glory of God and how we, as part of His creation may be part of that existence that brings glory to Him alone - exactly as it was destined to be from before even time and space itself existed!

We live Christian lives not so that we may, by doing so, offer something in return for a slice of “the pie in the sky when we die”.

We live the best lives we can in gratitude that by God’s grace, we may be part of the future glory of God and for being assured through His word, that our place at the table of the Lord in Heaven has already been reserved.

To put it another way, we may be like the little boy of our illustration. We can know that God would not have given us His word, that he would not have given His only Son to die on our behalf if we were not a part of His grand plan for all of creation. We can know this because all of creation is proof of it and all of creation will shout it out, as we will see… and because we know this, we may believe that we will share in His glory – in every aspect of His glory, and that is far greater than just making it to heaven when we die!

But before we get there…for now, we are in this life, and we thank God for being in this life, too, even as we go groaning under the knowledge of our sinfulness and our weakness and of the hardship and strife of this world, for we may hope and believe that a better life is to come.

This understanding will become important and clear I hope as we take a closer look at what Paul says in his letter to the Romans.